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Former Vice President Mike Pence will not face criminal charges following a DOJ investigation into the handling of classified documents.
CNN
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The Department of Justice has closed its investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents found at the home of former Vice President Mike Pence and will not bring any charges, according to a letter from the DOJ obtained by CNN.
The decision comes ahead of Pence’s planned announcement next week that he will run for president in 2024. It allows Pence to draw further distinctions between himself and former President Donald Trump, his political rival under serious investigation by the Justice Department and others.
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department’s National Security Division are conducting an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information,” the Justice Department wrote to Pence’s attorney. “Based on the results of that investigation, no criminal charges will be sought.”
In January, Pence’s lawyer found about a dozen documents marked classified at Pence’s home in Indiana after the former vice president asked his lawyer to search his records following the disclosure of classified documents. document owned by Joe Biden in Delaware.
Pence turned over the classified records to the FBI after their discovery, and the FBI and Justice Department’s National Security Division launched a review of how they got to Pence’s home. Pence said he did not know the documents were in his home but said “mistakes were made” and blamed them.
The Department of Justice is still investigating the handling of Trump and Biden’s classified records. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel in each investigation, citing the fact that they were candidates for president.
The DOJ declined to comment but confirmed the letter was sent.
Pence and his team were pleased but not surprised by the DOJ’s decision, a Pence adviser said.
Pence’s advisers said they felt the former vice president’s discovery of classified documents was at odds with Trump’s, both in terms of the original process Pence’s team followed when his documents packaged at the end of the Trump administration – if a small number of classified. The papers were accidentally unsealed – and Pence’s immediate cooperation with the FBI and the National Archives.
While Pence’s lawyer contacted the National Archives and promptly returned the documents to the FBI, Trump resisted returning the classified documents in his possession, which ultimately led to a subpoena last year and the authorization. in court on the August 2022 FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents and possible obstruction of investigators has resulted in interviews with several Trump aides and employees and extensive grand jury activity in recent years. months, signaling that the charging decision is imminent. The FBI seized more than 100 classified documents when it searched Mar-a-Lago in August after Trump’s lawyers testified that the former president turned over classified material in his possession after a subpoena.
This week, CNN first reported that prosecutors obtained an audio recording from the summer of 2021 in which Trump acknowledged that he was in possession of a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran.
When Garland appointed Smith in November to oversee the two classified documents and the January 6 Trump investigation, he said he did so “in the public interest” because Trump is now a presidential candidate.
Two months after Smith’s appointment, Garland appointed special counsel Robert Hur in January following reports that classified documents were found in Biden’s home and former private office.
Hur is still overseeing an active investigation into classified documents found in Biden’s possession, and he has been in contact with at least one witness in that investigation since being appointed in January.
Biden’s team said that when the classified documents were first discovered last fall, they immediately notified the National Archives, which then notified the Department of Justice. Biden’s lawyers stated that the documents were “inadvertently mishandled” and not illegally handled.
CNN will host a town hall with Pence on June 7, the day he is expected to announce his presidential campaign.
